Den Russiske Revolution, februar-oktober 1917

Lenin at Putilov factory at May 1917, painted i 1929 by Isaak Brodsky (1883–1939). Current location: State Historical Museum in Moskow in Russia. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Isaak_Brodsky_putilov.jpg Publicdomain

The History of the Russian Revolution
By Leon Trotsky (1932-33)
“This is Trotsky’s monumental history of the first successful workers revolution. In three volumes, this book was written some 13 years after the victory of the October Revolution. It traces the revolutionary strategy employed by the Bolsheviks to lead the masses of Russia’s workers and peasants to power. Details of the inner workings of the Bolshevik Party are explored as well as the political positions of all the major characters and groupings that participated in the revolution.” See Neil Davidson: History from below (Jacobin, 12 January 2018). På svensk: Historien underifrån (pdf) (Marxistarkiv.se, 29.01.2018).

International Socialism

Derek Howl: Bookwatch: the Russian Revolution (Issue 62, Spring 1994, p.129-146)
“The Russian Revolution has generated an enormous literature of varying worth. This article will concentrate upon those books most helpful for socialists.”

The October Revolution
“Eye-Witness reports and analyses of the Revolution by its participants and links to historical documents.”

Permanent Revolution

The road to red October: The Bolsheviks and working class power (pdf) (1987/2007, 36 p.)
“How can today’s revolts be turned into a socialist revolution? To answer this question we must look back at what happened in Russia 1917. In this spirit, The Road to Red October not only tells the gripping story of these events, but draws out the key lessons for today.”

The Petrograd workers and the Fall of the Old Régime: From the February Revolution to the July Days, 1917 (pdf)
By David Mandel (Macmillan, 1983, 213 p.)
“This is a study of the first months of the Russian Revolution as seen from the factory districts of Petrograd, the ‘red capital’.”

Six Red Months in Russia
By Louise Bryant (George H. Doran Company, 1918)
“An observers account of Russia before and during the proletarian dictatorship.”

1917 – Russia in revolution (Issue 2075, 3 November 2007)
“… a Socialist Worker special to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.” Scroll down to Features.

Socialist Worker (US)

Feature: The Russian Revolution of 1917, Part 1-11 (February-November 2007)
“Socialist Worker marks the 90th anniversary of the Russian Revolution with this series of articles outlining its course and consequences.”

Ten Days that Shook the World
By John Reed (Boni & Liveright, 1919)
“John Reed’s Ten Days that Shook the World represents one of the 20th Century’s greatest political-literary achievements, being one of the first book length eye-witness accounts of the great Russian October Revolution.”

In English

Karl Kautsky

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat (1918).
“The present Russian Revolution has, for the first time in the history of the world, made a Socialist Party the rulers of a great Empire … the Socialist Party which governs Russia to-day gained power in fighting against other Socialist Parties, and exercises its authority while excluding other Socialist Parties from the executive.”

Terrorism and Communism (1919).
“My starting point represented the central problem of modern Socialism, the attitude of Social Democracy to Bolshevik methods. But since Bolshevism had, of its own accord, referred to the Paris Commune of 1871 as being to some extent its precursor and its prototype … I undertook to draw a parallel between the Commune and the Soviet Republic.”

The Lessons of the October Experiment (1925).
“This article was published in 1925 in the journal Die Gesellschaft. In it Kautsky polemicises against Trotsky’s Lessons of October, a German translation of which had appeared earlier that year under the title 1917 – Lessons of the Russian Revolution.”

V.I. Lenin

The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky
“Kautsky’s pamphlet, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, recently published in Vienna (1918) is a most lucid example of that utter and ignominious bankruptcy of the Second International about which all honest socialists in all countries have been talking for a long time.”

Rosa Luxemburg

The Russian Revolution (1918).
“In Russia, the problem could only be posed. It could not be solved in Russia. And in this sense, the future everywhere belongs to ‘Bolshevism’.”
Debate:

Dictatorship and Terrorism (1920).
“The Radek brochure was endorsed by Trotsky as a suitable answer to Kautsky’s criticism of his book Terrorism and Communism : A Reply to Karl Kautsky (1920).”
See Introduction by Daniel Gaido.

Leon Trotsky

Terrorism and Communism. A Reply to Karl Kautsky (1920).
“This book was written by Leon Trotsky at the height of the Russian Civil War. While it is a polemical response to German social-democrat Karl Kautsky, it is also represents the Bolshevik defense of the extraordinary means the young workers’ republic had to take in order to defend itself from the almost two dozen armies that were on its soil trying to turn back the revolution.”

In English

Against the Current

Sarah Badcock: The crisis of revolutionary power (No.140, May/June 2009). Review of Alexander Rabinowitch’s book: The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd (2007).
“The book under review … is a meticulous and painstaking history, showing us the gaps and exploring the confusions of a tightly defined period. Rabinowitch is not afraid of asking the big questions surrounding this period, and addressing the fundamental problems.”

Samuel Farber: The Russian Revolution in retreat (No.136, September/October 2008). Review of Simon Pirani’s book: The Russian Revolution in retreat, 1920-24: Soviet workers and the new Communist elite (2008)
“Pirani’s work focuses on the issue of soviet and workplace democracy and is based on an exhaustive investigation of archival materials concerning Moscow, including the Communist Party, the Cheka-GPU, and workplace organizations … The richness of detail and originality of Pirani’s research is remarkable.” See also the books site (Revolutioninretreat.com).

Simon Pirani: Notes from a revolution dying (No.134, May/June 2008).
“It was heartening to discover the wide spectrum of ideas, among Bolshevik and non-Bolshevik workers alike, about how to build the new society. Equally, it was depressing to learn of the leadership’s intolerance of this heterogeneity.”

David Mandel: The Russian Revolution ninety years after (No.131, November-December 2007).
“The October Revolution of 1917 was the most influential political event of the twentieth century. But since history is written by the victors, it is not well known that October was the opening shot of a vast and powerful challenge to capitalism that swept the industrial world and had echoes in the colonial countries.”

An October for us, for Russia and for the whole world (No.131, November-December 2007).
“This appeal from Russian intellectuals and artists on the 90th anniversary of the Russian October Revolution comes to us from veteran leftists, social democrats, artists and even children of Left Oppositionists …”

Susan Weissman: The Russian Revolution revisited (No.75, July/August 1998).
“Despite what it turned into, the Russian Revolution was a transcendent historic event: It advanced the demands of the French Revolution for liberty, equality, and fraternity-conscious demands to end human alienation, which were subverted by the exploitative form of wage-labor-into mandates for human emancipation with the goal of ending exploitation, abolishing wage-labor and dismantling hierarchy.”

Paul Le Blanc: Lenin and the challenge of revolutionary democracy (November 2006).
“In these remarks I will focus on positive aspects of Lenin’s heritage for today’s activists – in both his conceptions of the revolutionary party and revolutionary socialist strategy. I will then suggest how post-revolutionary developments represented not the culmination but the tragic defeat of Lenin’s perspectives.”
The article in Danish.

Mike Haynes: Marxism and the Russian Question after the fall (Vol.10. No.4, December 2002, p.317-362; online at ResearchGate).
“This paper is intended as a major review article which discusses how, a decade after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the different theories of the left about the nature of that bloc stand up.”

Kevin Murphy: Conceding the Russian Revolution to liberals (Issue 126, Spring 2010, p.197-204). Review of Simon Pirani’s book: The Russian Revolution in retreat, 1920-24: Soviet workers and the new Communist elite (2008).
“Given Pirani’s concessions on almost every interpretive issue, it is not surprising that his book is now drawing praise from liberal academics.”

Ken Olende: Lenin’s Petrograd (Issue 117, Winter 2008, p.198-200). Review of Alexander Rabinowitch’s book: The Bolsheviks in Power (2007).
“Alexander Rabinowitch details the October Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd, and how power was won and held over the period until the celebrations of the revolution’s first anniversary … For the most part he sides with the cautious line of Lev Kamenev in arguments on the Bolshevik central committee – against the ‘recklessness’ of Lenin (and occasionally Leon Trotsky).”

The light that hasn’t failed (Issue 110, Spring 2006, p.153-167).
“Kevin Murphy’s book Revolution and Counterrevolution: Class Struggle in a Moscow Metal Factory is a landmark in the study of Soviet history … Kevin discussed the issues raised by his book, which won the 2005 Deutscher Memorial prize, with Pete Glatter.”
See also review article by David Mandel: The study of a Russian factory (Against the Current, No.130, September/October 2007).

Mike Haynes: Was there a parliamentary alternative in Russia in 1917? (Issue 76, September 1997, p.3-66).
“Our argument is that the Russian Revolution was an attempt to escape from the bloodiest war that capitalism had yet produced, a war which was creating internal crises everywhere, and which in Russia demanded radical solutions. This war, a product of capitalism at its most barbaric, created a polarisation in Russian society. Workers could either go forward or risk being crushed by chaos and counter-revolution in a way that was subsequently to happen many times in the 20th century.”

Judy Cox: A light in the darkness (Issue 76, Autumn 1997, p.109-116).
Review of Morgan Philips Price, Dispatches from the Revolution: Russia 1916–1918 (Pluto Press, 1997, 181 p.): “When revolution swept Russia in 1917, several foreign journalists were there to give inspiring accounts of it. Among these accounts, this volume of writings by Morgan Philips Price deserves a special place.”

Derek Howl: Bookwatch: the Russian Revolution (Issue 62, Spring 1994, p.129-145)
“The Russian Revolution has generated an enormous literature of varying worth. This article will concentrate upon those books most helpful for socialists.”

John Rees: In defence of October (Issue 52, Autumn 1991, p.3–79).
“[The article] reviews what socialists have been saying about the October revolution. He mounts a defence of of the tradition that arose from the October revolution and shows it was crushed by the Stalinist counter-revolution.”

International Socialist Review

Ahmed Shawki: 80 years since the Russian Revolution (Issue 3, Winter 1997, p.7-24).
“The Russian Revolution of October 1917 remains to this day the most decisive event of the international workers’ movement. The Russian events took place in the midst of the barbaric carnage known as World War I. The swift overthrow of the Tsar in February of that year and the almost bloodless Bolshevik-led insurrection in October held out the hope for millions across Europe.”

New Interventions

Paul Flewers: Did the Bolsheviks seize power by deception? (Vol.5, No.3-4, October/November 1994, p.29-36; online at Marxists Internet Archive).
“The Russian Revolution remains a major landmark both in history in general and for the Marxian movement. We must neither demonise nor sanctify the Bolsheviks, but attempt to understand both their positive and negative aspects. Recent scholarship permits us to go beyond the traditional clichés and mythologies, and to attempt to construct a truly objective appraisal.” The article is online at Marxists Internet Archive.

Ernest Mandel: October 1917: Coup d’état or social revolution: The legitimacy of the Russian Revolution (pdf) (No.17-18, 1992, 54 p.).
“Ernest Mandel sets out to analyze it in a polemical and critical essay. Polemical, because today this revolution is the target of such a strong campaign of ideological denigration that one of the formative experiences of the past century has become incomprehensible.

Permanent Revolution

Mark Hoskisson: The Red Jacobins: Thermidor and the Russian Revolution in 1921 (pdf) (Issue 17, Summer 2010).
“Stalin’s victory over Trotsky and the Left Opposition in 1924 is considered the key turning point in the degeneration of the Russian Revolution. Here Mark Hoskisson argues that it was in fact Lenin and Trotsky’s fatal decision to close down inner party democracy in 1921 sealed the fate of the revolutionary Bolshevik tradition.”

Did the Bolsheviks ruin the revolution? (Issue 12, Spring 2009). Review of Simon Pirani’s book: The Russian Revolution in retreat, 1920-24: Soviet workers and the new Communist elite (2008).
“A new account of the Russian Revolution as it recovered from the civil
war lambasts Lenin and his comrades, says Bill Jefferies.” See also the books site (Revolutioninretreat.com).

Peter Taffe: The legacy of the Russian revolution (Issue 112, October 2007).
“A review of Orlando Figes’s book, A People’s Tragedy, acclaimed as an authoritative history but, in reality, an attempt to obscure the real significance of the momentous events of 1917.”

Lenin: the original dictator? (Issue 80, February 2004).
“Eighty years after the death of Lenin, the ruling classes globally still link him to the most horrific dictators. Per Åke Westerlund looks at the reasons behind these decades of slander.”

Socialist Review

Abbie Bakan: A rich history of revolution (Issue 318, October 2007).
“What can an internet-surfing generation learn from the struggle of workers, soldiers and peasants 90 years ago? Abbie Bakan celebrates the Russian Revolution of October 1917.”

Socialismo Storia

Morten Thing: The Russian Revolution and the Danish labour movement (pdf) (nr.3, 1991, s.177-219; online at RUB).
“The question of how the Danish working class reacted to the Russian Revolution would demand a wide-ranging answer. Perhaps the question could not be answered at all today. However, we can raise the issue of how the organized labour movement reacted, and how it later managed its relationship with the Revolution and the Soviet Union.”

SocialistWorker.org

Series: The Russian Revolution (2013).
“In 2007, Socialist Worker marked the 90th anniversary of the Russian Revolution of 1917 with a yearlong series outlining its course and consequences.”

Weekly Worker

Hillet Ticktin: Gambling on the world revolution (Issue 750, December 18, 2008). Review of Simon Pirani’s book: The Russian Revolution in retreat, 1920-24: Soviet workers and the new Communist elite (2008).
“In reviewing Simon Pirani’s book, I am going to look at it on two planes. The first, accepting the viewpoint of the author, considers his goals and how he achieved them. The second considers how far the author’s standpoint is valid.” See also the books site (Revolutioninretreat.com).

Boris Kagarlitsky: Russia 1917 and the global revolution (Issue 646, October 26, 2006).
“What were the conditions that made Russia ripe for revolution? What were the factors that led to its failure? Boris Kagarlitsky , one of Russia’s leading Marxists, argues for a dialectical approach in analysing the Soviet Union and resuming the tasks of October.”
The article in Danish.

What Next?

Al Richardson: The Russian Revolution: a twentieth century enigma (No.6, 1997).
“One idea steadily gaining ground among establishment historians is that the Bolshevik Revolution cut short Russia’s democratic development, forcing it to make a bloody detour at enormous cost for two generations. This is, of course, no new idea, but a very old one, rising again from the grave to haunt the living.”

Frederick Choate and David North: Bolsheviks in Power – Professor Alexander Rabinowitch’s important study of the first year of soviet power (9 November 2007).
“[The book] is a significant work of historical scholarship. It will serve, for many years to come, as an essential reference point for the study of the political and social aftermath of the overthrow of the bourgeois Provisional Government and the establishment of the Bolshevik regime.”

Den Russiske Revolution 1912-1922

Sites og artikelsamlinger

Bolsheviks in the Russian revolution – How the revolution degenerated
“The following articles, by some of the best social historians of the revolution, go a long way in explaining the process.”

Libcom.org

Russian Revolution
“Articles about the Russian Revolution of 1917 to 1921, and participants thereof.”

The Russian Revolution of 1917: A Guide to Electoral Behavior in Revolutionary Russia
“This site accesses graphic representations of the electoral results of some constituencies in revolutionary Russia, illustrating the relative appeal to Russian voters in 1917 of Bolsheviks and other leading parties.”

1917 – revolution for freedom & equality (3/11, April 2007)
“The Russian Revolution, the Stalinist counter-revolution, and the working class: analyses from Labor Action and The New International, 1942 to 1957.”

October 1917: Coup d’etat or social revolution? (pdf)
By Ernest Mandel (Notebooks for Study and Research, 1992, 63 p.)
“There is currently a real campaign of denigration of the October 1917 Revolution underway, in both the West and in Eastern Europe. It is often very bitter. It is based on historical falsifications and myths that are just as great as Stalinist myths and falsifications.”

Red Petrograd: Revolution in the Factories 1917-1918
By S.A. Smith (1983, 347 p.; online at Libcom.org)
“Well researched and detailed study of the factory-level impact of the Russian Revolution in Petrograd, dealing in particular with implementation of workers’ control by the factory councils.”

Year One of the Russian Revolution
By Victor Serge (1930, 436 p.; online at Marxists Internet Archive)
“The purpose of Year One of the Russian Revolution is essentially one of reconstructing the chain of events, in the Russia of revolution and counter-revolution, which has led from the ‘Commune-State’ of 1917 to the party dictatorship of late 1918.” See also the Introduction by Peter Sedgwick (p.1-15) + Amy Muldoon: Revolution besieged (International Socialist Review, Issue 102, Fall 2016, p.102-122).